What’s in a name? Liberal guilt, apparently, when the name is Hispanic

It’s spring, so I had a graduation to attend (which was just one of the many reasons I haven’t been able to get any blogging done). It was a very nice graduation, in a pretty suburban setting. The students were shiny and happy. I’d say roughly 70% were some type of white ethnicity (WASP, Jewish, Greek, Russian, etc.), another 15% were Asian, and the remaining 15% were everything else. This is, after all, one of those nice affluent suburbs Obama wants to destroy.

I should add here that you’d look long and hard to find a racist in this community. What’s keeping minorities away isn’t redlining and bad attitude (no crosses being burnt on lawns here). Instead, it’s simple economics. Despite 60 years of Democrat-led or -inspired social and economic policies being directed towards minority uplift, few minorities are being uplifted to my highly Progressively white enclave.

Anyway, back to the graduation. When the speeches and songs were over, and it was time to hand out diplomas, the task went to two of the school’s multiple vice principles, both women with Anglo names. The women began reciting the students’ names — Anglo, Jewish, Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, etc. — all in flat, totally American accents. That is, they did this until they got to students with Hispanic names. Every time that happened, the women suddenly sounded as if they were applying for a job on one of Rosetta Stone’s newest “Learn Spanish” video. Every “R” was rolled, every guttural consonant was coughed out. And then, after the student with the Hispanic name accepted his or her diploma, that flat, American accent returned.

I’ve commented before (although I can’t find my earlier comment) about the exact same phenomenon on NPR — and I can guarantee you that two administrators at a public school in Marin regularly tune in to NPR. The NPR talking heads make no effort with German names (it’s “Munich,” not “Munchen”), or Russian names, or French names (it’s “Paris,” not “Paree”), or Chinese names, or American-black names, but when it comes to Hispanic names, they all sound as if they’re trying to outdo Mel Blanc’s over-the-top Speedy Gonzalez accent.

I swear to you that when you get Progressives near Hispanic names, they suddenly turn into the white liberal equivalent of Key and Peele’s famous substitute teacher:

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Not guilt, Book
It’s the oral equivalent of highlighting text, as if to say “Look! See how diverse we are?!”
I’d wager the same treatment goes to other favored minorities as well.

Lee

See my story above — my friend was EXTREMELY annoyed at the affectation of the other person. Pretty much because they were doing it for precisely the reason you say.

Lee

I have a funny memory of someone doing that to someone else i knew with a Spanish last name, and the person with the Spanish last name corrected then to use an anglicized pronunciation. It was pretty funny…

A million years ago, i spent a great deal of time on Chicago, and I would listen to one of the Spanish stations. I got amused listening to the talks and when they came across non Spanish names, they’d say then with the normal flat American accent.

I think it amused me because when I was in Hebrew class, and we’d come across non-Israeli names, we’d still try to affect an Israeli accent on them.

BozoerRebbe

I seem to recall my high school French teachers pronouncing our names as they would in France.

Lee

Ditto, here. One girl had a name that in English sounded kind of ugly to a kid, but in French sounded lovely. Everyone started calling her that full time.

MacG

A friend of mine whose great grandparents and large lands grants here in CaleeforneyeA is of Spanish descent and get particularly annoyed when people assume said friend speaks Spanish and assume Mexican heritage because neither is true.

ymarsakar

The whites consider the hispanics better than black culture. Why else would Hussein O’s Leftist army import in so many rapists and child molestors from Mexico.

There’s a kind of reverse assimilation going on. The white Americans are so weak now, in places like Demoncrat central, that the hispanic culture easily conquers em.

David Foster

Obama pronounces Pakistan as “Pah-kee-stahn,” to the orgasmic joy of his supporters, thrilled that we finally have an “intellectual” as President.

If you’ll notice, modern “progressives” are quite obsessed with accents and manners of speaking. One reason for the hate directed at Sarah Palin is that she doesn’t speak in the accepted Ivy League manner.

MikeDevx

I grew up in a suburb of Detroit that was about 60% of Polish descent.
I’d love to watch these people try to handle, say,
Krzysztof Szczepañski

or
Heniuta Wieczorek

RaymondJelli

That’s just cruel.

Lee

In one of my grad school classes, we had a “Cwy.” This is the Polish spelling of the Hebrew name, “Tsvi,” and, if course, pronounced exactly the same. Just for fun, and to be obnoxious, we’d call him, “Kwee.” We definitely knew the proper way to pronounce his name–not just because he told us, but it was a history of the holocaust class, and we definitely knew how to more or less pronounce Polish names.

BozoerRebbe

The National Lampoon once suggested that Italy sell vowels to Poland.

RaymondJelli

Libs want everyone to be authentic except Jews and Christians. We all gonna be A-Aron, Mozeezes and Ma – Ri- I- Am.

Michael Hiteshew

Ray-Mon-Jay-Eli

RaymondJelli

Mokal High-Tee Dashoo

Ruth H

Here in Texas we have many Spanish origin names of towns, lakes and rivers. During the recent floods it was interesting to hear the river we of all ethnicities in Texas call Blanko suddenly become Blanco, as if every newscaster were of Hispanic speaking heritage. Locally there is a town of Refugio, which from the time I landed in the area in 1949, is called Refurio. A few years back a few newscasters decided to call it RefuHio, they were not Hispanic. I notice they are now calling it Refurio again. It is just impossible for people who speak Texan to say RefuHio without it sounding downright silly.

My school is over 90% Hispanic, and the Administration makes a point of asking whether students want a Spanish or English pronunciation. I always find it interesting to see which kids choose which.

BozoerRebbe

You’ll never hear anyone in the mainstream media pronounce Benyamin Netanyahu’s name in Hebrew (it’s either Bibi or Benjamin) nor will they say Yerushalayim (J’lem) like they say Mumbai and Beijing. Sometimes they’ll refer to “What the Muslims call Haram al Sharif, what the Jews refer to as the Temple Mount”, but they’d never call it Har HaBayit.

JohnSkookum

These pretentious leftist shitheads always mispronounce Beijing rather badly. They soften the “j” as if they were speaking French: “Bei-zzzhing”. This is incomprehensible to a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese who pronounces the “j” harder than the “j” in “jump” – And the “B” is very hard too, so it comes out almost like “Pei-ching”.

I’d probably use the “fake” accent, too, except with me it’s not “fake” because I’m fluent in Spanish, I’ve lived in two Spanish-speaking countries, and earned 2.5 degrees in it. Natives are surprised to hear a gringa without a gringa accent.

Yes, the progressives are doing the Hispanic pronunciation as a way to show off their multi-culti creds. It’s highly pretentious.

OTOH, if YOU were living in a foreign country and people knew how to say your name right, why SHOULDN’T they?

my conservative father in law always speaks in affected accents (Fwonch, not French). but then again, he reads NYT and collects liberals who think they are elitist. he tilts right because of taxes, but wants to be embraced by liberals.

Spaceman

NPR reporters always do this! Me in my my car pool buddy laugh our asses off after their Hispanic reporters give a perfect unaccented English story then sign off with a 4 part rapid fire R rolling signoff Hispanic name. I like the Spanish language and am somewhat proficient in it, but it strikes us hilarious since we know it’s coming

michael hamilton

I got stuck with Peter Jennings as my commencement speaker in 1985. I remember vividly him deriding the “Politics of Ma-Cheeese-mo ” practiced by the Reagan administration.

CapitalistRoader

The absolute sign of language correctness is how you pronounce the name of a particular African country. All NPR employees know to pronounce it nee-jair. Oddly, they never pronounce the name of the country next door as nee-jair-ee-uh.

I would be careful visiting the outback of either country for fear of being attacked by wild tee-jairs.

PostLiberal

I do see something comical about someone who has minimal command of Spanish giving full Castellano/Espanol/Spanish pronunciations of Spanish language surnames. Nonetheless, the effort is often appreciated, as I found out when I gave the Castellano/Espanol/Spanish treatment to a Mujica [no relation to everyone’s favorite Southern Cone terrorist cum President cum enabler of Venezuelan tyrants] when I was a teacher. I worked in Latin America, and am occasionally mistaken here in the US for being a native Spanish speaker. [with the “accent” on occasionally..]

First names, I will generally pronounce with an English accent if speaking in English. Ditto foreign countries- Spain not ETHspanya, where they speak Spanish, not CaTHeyano. Not NeecaRRRagua, a.k.a Nicaragua. “Mujica” I will use an “h” for the “j,” not the throat-clearing sound used in Mexican Spanish- but not using an English language “j” pronunciation either. “Rodriguez” will get an English language “r” sound, not the trilling front of the teeth sound of the Spanish “r.” I figure that them as wants the correct Spanish language pronunciation will have to wait for me to speak Spanish.

I have a German language surname, which native Spanish speakers occasionally butcher by mistaking it for a surname from another language. Never fails to amuse me. Nor do I try to correct them.

Others have pointed out the Spanish language place names in Texas that are pronounced a la Inglesa. Or perhaps better said, a la Tejana.

Quancho

Pecause Mahreeah Heenohoesah duzz eet.

MichaelAdams

When I stopped listening to NPR, shortly after they went all Lord HawHaw in the early stages of Gulf War II, they still mangled Spanish names. We used to rant that they could pronounce French names, but not Spanish ones. Remember, Spanish is the second language in Texas. Huge numbers of us speak some Spanish, and, while we are very worried about importing millions of unskilled Third World workers, we see Texans of Hispanic descent as our friends and neighbors, often relatives, since intermarriage is so common, at least with Hispanic Texans whose families have lived here for a few generations. And yes, native speakers of Spanish as often Anglicize their names as give them the full tilt Ethpanyol. We hear that languages change, when people want to justify corruptions in the meaning of words, the precision of grammar, but the much more legitimate changes are more often the product of languages meeting, as with Anglisch and Norse, or English and French, or among the two hundred Sino-Tibetan languages. For most of us, it’s a bit of fun, pronouncing something the “right” but utterly unfamiliar way. e.g.”Refugio.” People hardly recognize it, since “Refurio” is so much more common.

My Hispanic patient’s families are terribly amused when I go on a rant about the Spanish Television news, which mangles the textbook Spanish grammar that so many of us struggled to master so many years ago. They just take it all in stride. “No le hace.”

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